NEWS
MASTERS OPPORTUNITY: Exploring stakeholder experiences of power relations in collaborative water resources governance
Join a diverse team committed to excellence, engagement and social justice, working across Africa to address some of the most challenging questions confronting sustainability science and practice. Background to the project: ‘Unlocking Resilient Benefits from African Water Resources’ (RESBEN) Sustainable water resource development remains elusive because development has largely externalized costs to the environment and vulnerable people. Novel research theory, methodologies and practice are needed to meet, for example, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In response, the RESBEN project team has developed the innovative Adaptive Systemic Approach (ASA) . The ASA provides a coherent framework drawing on [...]
Prof Oonsie Biggs secures EMS Faculty’s first NRF A-rating
Prof Reinette (Oonsie) Biggs, the incumbent of the DST/NRF Research Chair in Social-ecological Systems and Resilience, recently received an A-rating from the National Research Foundation (NRF), a first for the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. An A-rating is awarded to researchers who are unequivocally recognised by their peers as leading international scholars in their field for the high quality and impact of their recent research outputs. The rating is primarily based on Biggs’ research outputs over the past eight years and took into consideration the evaluation made by local [...]
POSTDOC OPPORTUNITIES: Nature-based Solutions in Southern Africa’s Water Towers, ACDI, University of Cape Town
VACANCY 1: POST DOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOW – SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CONSTRAINTS OF NATURE-BASED SOLUTIONS (Closing Date: 31 January 2021) The African Climate and Development Initiative (ACDI) based at the University of Cape Town (UCT) wishes to appoint a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to support the social, economic and political research component of the TES-NbS (Towards Equitable and Sustainable Nature-based Solutions in Southern Africa’s Water Towers) project. The successful candidate will unpack the social, economic and political processes and trade-offs that shape which Nature-based Solutions are adopted and who benefits in [...]
Resource portal launched for resilience practice in southern Africa
The Resilience Hub, an online portal for resilience in practice, launched today. This central information gateway offers users easy access to a variety of resources including webinar recordings, training materials, podcasts, publications and more, aimed at promoting resilience building in the southern African region. “Until now resources like these have been scattered across the internet,” explains Maike Hamann, one of the creators of the portal. “We wanted to create a central platform where resilience practitioners, researchers, and other stakeholders could easily and freely access a diversity of resources catered to [...]
MASTERS OPPORTUNITY: Exploring community-based approaches for maintaining rural water supply infrastructure in Namibia
Opportunity for Masters student Closing date for applications: Monday 7 September 2020 Project background Around 275 million people in Africa do not have reliable access to drinking water. Many communities in rural areas depend on handpumps to access groundwater, but at any given time, one in four of those handpumps is broken. Mechanics are often unaware of failures, leaving pumps out of action for weeks or even months, which can drive people to use other distant, dirty, or expensive water sources. The FundiFix model is one response to Africa’s rural [...]
RELATED NEWS
INTRODUCTORY COURSE: Facilitating social learning and stakeholder engagement in natural resource management
Rhodes University and the Tsitsa Project are excited to announce the opening of applications for a new national level online course: Facilitating social learning and stakeholder engagement in natural resource management. The course aims to inform and strengthen the existing and future practice of educators, trainers, facilitators (and people interested in these roles) working in NRM contexts with up-to-date theory, methods and processes. Participant practices will be strengthened through a series of assignments tailored by students and their mentors to meet their contextual and organisational needs. There is no prior level of experience required - the course draws and builds [...]
CALL FOR DST/NRF SARChI-funded PhD APPLICATIONS
We seek motivated individuals interested to pursue a PhD linked to two projects, namely the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes initiative and the Social‐ecological regime shifts in the Anthropocene project. Applicants should have a keen interest in sustainability and sustainability transitions, an interest and ability to integrate across the social and natural sciences, and enjoy collaboration and working in teams. Interested individuals should have a strong academic track‐record, participate in the events and activities of the CST, and be interested in developing a career around topics such as social‐ecological systems, resilience and risk, complexity thinking, social innovation and [...]
New PhD Positions in Design at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway
The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) has some new PhD positions at the Institute of Design. Strategic investments from the Ministry of Education in Norway in the wake of COVID-19, has resulted in additional recruitment through existing calls for this autumn 2020 and a doubling of our master’s program intake. Additional proposals are invited towards an existing call for Systems Oriented Design, here:https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/186662/phd-position-in-systems-oriented-design-at-aho To enable additional applications, the call deadline is extended to 22 June 2020. The additional PhD positions are linked to a number of themes [...]
PhD opportunity: Global perspectives on adaptive wildlife management
Despite the current uncertainties, we are planning our PhD course on “Global Perspectives on Adaptive Wildlife Management”, including a 16-day field trip at the Nsasani trust campus in Kruger National Park in January 2021. This course is co-organized with the Nsasani Trust (Karen Vickers) and Nelson Mandela University (Graham Kerley) and consists of a mixture of lectures, field trips and group work. We organized this course early 2019, which was a great success and it received an award for Best PhD course at SLU. A key aspect of the course [...]
Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
A research group located in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science (EGS) at UCT, working with the UK - led One Ocean Hub (OOH) Project, wishes to appoint a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow. This is a collaborative global research project funded by the UK Global Challenges Research Fund aimed at promoting integrated ocean governance for equitable and inclusive sustainability. Situated within a social justice and environmental sustainability frame, this Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship will focus on new approaches and methodologies for incorporating diverse socio-economic and cultural values and knowledges into marine [...]